One of the Web’s more accomplished snarkmeisters argues that the push by some goody-goodies for more niceness on the Internet – for instance, the decision by BuzzFeed’s new books editor to avoid negative reviews, or, in Scocca’s opinion, almost anything Dave Eggers says – is worse than the problem it’s trying to address.

Mark Shenton recounts how this somewhat-naughty-but-entirely-legal picture from San Francisco (which Shenton didn’t even know was online) led the editors of the Sunday Express to decide it was just too embarrassing to keep him on.

“It’s not discussed enough… someone should write a book on it – how we really lost how we make and listen to music with the onslaught of mass media. It’s changed so much – in 1933 there were 20,000 jukeboxes in America. By 1939 there were 400,000 jukeboxes! That immediately eliminates so many live musicians.”

“The fact that Christmas music on the radio performs best the night before Christmas shouldn’t surprise you, but after digging into the data for the top holiday-format stations in each of those markets last year, a few interesting trends emerged.”

“Scavengers obsessively comb through page after page of Google Books, hoping to stumble upon some glitch that hasn’t yet been unearthed. This phenomenon is most thoroughly documented on a Tumblr called The Art of Google Books, which collects two types of images: analog stains that are emblems of a paper book’s history and digital glitches that result from the scanning.”

“In particular, the obsession with codifying, regulating, recording, reviewing, verifying, vetting, and chronicling, with assessing achievement, forecasting achievement, identifying weak points, then establishing commissions for planning strategies for regular encounters to propose solutions to weak points, and further commissions empowered to apply for funding to pay for means to implement these solutions, and so on.”

“During the Nazi occupation, she had worked in the Museum Jeu de Paume, an important depot for art plundered by the Nazis. There she tried to keep track of where the artworks ended up, registering every single work.”

The kingdom’s Committee for the Prevention of Vice and Promotion of Virtue has ordered bookstores to remove from their shelves the popular fantasy novel HWJN, about a young djinni who falls in love with a human woman. Among the Committee’s objections: the young woman’s use of a Ouija board.

“The authorities here are investigating the transfer to UNICEF in Germany of one of Europe’s largest and finest private art collections, a vast trove amassed by Dr. Gustav Rau, an eccentric collector and philanthropist who died in 2002.”

“Many people know that Nelson Mandela’s life inspired novels, poems, plays and films, but few people know how powerful his effect on the theater was and how powerful the theater’s effect was on him.” A tribute from playwright Emily Mann, director of Princeton’s McCarter Theater.

“Long considered one of the most influential letters in the Roman alphabet, at the turn of the century E had originally been heralded as the signal letter in the digital world. But in recent years, the letter had suffered a series of debilitating setbacks that closely correlated with the rise of online applications. It died May 20, 2013.”

“It is a heck of a lot of activity for a man who has been dead since 1616 and was once consigned to dusty textbooks – and it is a trend that I am not sure anyone would have predicted even in the Nineties when Shakespeare was performed regularly and well, but without generating the same enthusiasm.”

“Britain already had a world-class franchise, in the shape of the James Bond films – but they tend to only come along every three or four few years, whereas there were eight Potter movies in the space of a decade – which meant virtually continuous employment for literally thousands of film workers in this country.”

“Creative industries led by Hollywood account for about $504 billion, or at least 3.2 percent of U.S. goods and services, the government said in its first official measure of how the arts and culture affect the economy.”

“Several independent sources have called on the city to find the association in breach and to retake control of the hall, which Minneapolis owns by virtue of sponsoring a $14 million state bonding request for a recently completed renovation.”

In a statement, the biennial’s president, Paolo Baratta, referred to Okwui Enwezor’s knowledge of the “complex phenomenon of globalisation”. The curator of Documenta 11 in Kassel, Enwezor has organised biennials from Seville to South Korea and the major travelling survey of post-war African art “The Short Century” (2001-02).

“The investment in physical infrastructure may not correlate with income potential. Just because they are historic structures that should be saved doesn’t mean they should all be historic house museums.”

“The drawing of Isabella in the Louvre, on which the painting is clearly based, was done some time between late 1499 and March of 1500, when Leonardo was a guest at her court in Mantua. According to the newspaper, carbon dating of the painting conducted at the University of Arizona confirms that it was executed sometime between 1460 and 1650, placing it in a corresponding timeframe.”

“Some of the city’s most powerful leaders are working furiously to fashion a grand bargain in which nonprofit foundations would put up $500 million to spin off the Detroit Institute of Arts from the city, and that money would be used to reduce pension cuts and help rebuild city services.”

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